Former interim UFC lightweight champion Dustin Porier has revealed that he could have been Nate Diaz's opponent when he failed the weigh-in before his fight with Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 279 in September 2022.
"Hell yeah, I agreed to fight Nate 24 hours before the fight itself. The plan was to fly to Vegas and go straight to the weigh-in ceremony. I'll tell you what happened. Mike Brown came to Louisiana to visit me for a couple days. We had dinner, went to bed, and Friday morning my phone was crackling with the number of missed calls and messages. I asked my manager what was wrong. They explained to me that Chimaev hadn't made the weight and asked if I could get down to 77 pounds.
I said yes. And to confirm that I would be able to make weight safely, I was contacted by the Nevada State Athletic Commission via video call. They demanded that I get on the scale. At that point, my weight was in the neighborhood of 80 pounds. I was scheduled to fly to Vegas that same day. I was really on a weight race. But the UFC made a different decision on Nate," Puryear said on The MMA Hour show.
